


Audience and Participant

by BlasphemousProphet



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: Daniela is having trouble finding a place for herself in the relationship, F/M, M/M, Polyamory Negotiations, Threesome - F/M/M, bisexual hernando, daniela character study, daniela pov, even if he thought he wouldn't be, lito is jealous, the negotiations are not as thorough as they should be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 15:56:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10539735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlasphemousProphet/pseuds/BlasphemousProphet
Summary: Hernando is interested in Daniela because he likes his dramatic brunettes. The polyamorous negotiations ensue.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post season 1, with the three of em chilling in Lito's apartment, coming to peace with the world.  
> Feel free to comment, I want to hear your thoughts! Too wordy?

They had tried once, Hernando and Daniela. Lito was definitively not into women, but Hernando was. Daniela could tell. “It is a look, in a man’s face, right in the eyes,” was what her mother used to say. When she watched Lito and Hernando have their heavenly sex (and ah, how heavenly it was), Lito’s eyes would crinkle up with passion and sometimes he would peek at her to see how she was reacting, but none of the passion was directed towards her. Lito was an actor, and he liked an audience in all things. There was the validation of it, that someone was having a good time watching him, that he was performing well.

Lito tried to explain it once. “Me and Hernando is exceptional! You watching just makes it more exceptional! My audiences are not gay or straight, they are just-“

“Interested in love,” interrupted Daniela.

“Like you are,” said Lito.

It was embarrassing, this newfound interest Daniela had in love. Daniela felt like she was in love now, in the strangest, most arousing love she had ever been in, a love with almost no place for her in it. She had had to carve herself a space out of Lito and Hernando’s love, and sometimes she still wasn’t sure she wasn’t welcome. There were a lot of nights that Hernando politely requested that she leave. There were no more pictures taken, after what had happened. There were boundaries put into place.

Yet even with all the boundaries, the relationship, or whatever you could call it, seemed to exist in a gray area. They were not fucking each other, it was not even a given that they all loved Daniela. They were unexplainable. Daniela had been unexplainable, from bruises blooming on her body she couldn’t talk about to family history she was forbidden to speak of. Daniela had always existed in the realm of the unspeakable, of the unexplainable. What was happening between Daniela and Lito and Hernando seemed to make sense, to slot right in somewhere in her psyche, to just work for her.

So Lito’s eyes, while performing sexuality in the bedroom and different masculinities outside of it, had all its ardor reserved for Hernando, his smooth back, his strong thighs. None of it was for Daniela and Daniela was alright with that. She had spent too much time with men whose eyes raked over her, assessed her, refused to leave her. A man with no interest in Daniela was a foreign object, an alternate entity, a different kind of man. Bueno.

Now Hernando, on the other hand, his eyes looked different. He would focus on Lito but spare glances at Daniela, curious glances to see where her hands were now, to see what shapes her mouth was making, even as Lito fell apart against him.

Hernando had discussed it with Daniela while Lito was working out, after a long morning of what Lito called ‘love invention, like lovemaking, but even more.’

“My type is dramatic brunette lunatics,” said Hernando. “Of which you both are.”

Daniela tossed her hair, flattered. “So I am your type?”

Hernando shrugged and nodded.

“Is that why let me stay?”

“No,” said Hernando, shocked. “You are our friend.”

“You don’t do this with all your friends,” said Daniela.

“No,” said Hernando. “We do not.”

“Do you want to-“ started Daniela, eyeing Hernando’s crotch. He looked half hard already. Daniela was so easy for these boys, with or without sex.

“I don’t know,” said Hernando.

So then of course they had to try it. They asked Lito when they were all in their usual positions, Daniela in the chair by the wall, Lito and Hernando in the bed.

“Can Daniela come in?” asked Hernando. Lito was panting heavily,  having just come on Hernando’s thigh. He looked distracted and debauched. Hernando’s cock still stood at attention, waiting for Lito’s reply.

“What? Why?”

“I…thought,” Hernando said carefully. “That maybe she could-“

“Sure,” said Lito, waving his hand expansively. It seemed like having constant sexual contact with seven other people had left him open to the idea of multiple desires, multiple people, multiple everything (not that he had been against the idea before, more that he had been too wholly consumed with protecting his heterosexuality against rumor to experiment, and too obsessed with Hernando, still, to even want to.) It was a marvelous thing that Hernando didn’t mind being shared.

Daniela got out of the chair and came to the bed.

“Is this alright?” she said to Lito.

Lito’s eyes were narrowed into tired slits. “Yes,” said Lito. “Take good care of him.”

As Hernando unsnapped Daniela’s bra, Lito became more alert, sitting up in bed. His expression was an odd combination of repulsion and dismay as he watched Hernando spreading Daniela’s thighs.

“You are soaking,” said Hernando softly, sexily, as he slid one finger inside her.

Daniela was wet but she was not comfortable. She was feeling the pressure to perform in bed, the same performance she had been giving all her life. Arch your back, moan, scream, beg, act like his cock is God’s gift to your body. Feeling Lito’s eyes on her, sensing the odd dynamic in the room, wasn’t helping either. But Hernando was good at what he was doing and Daniela began to relax.

Then Hernando glanced at Lito and stopped all his movements. Lito looked rattled, jealous, afraid. Hernando wiped his hands on Daniela’ thighs and gently climbed off her, pushing her legs closed.

“I’m sorry, Daniela,” said Hernando. “We cannot do this. Lito is not happy.”

Daniela lay on the bed, feeling embarrassment build inside her. She closed her eyes and she could hear Hernando whispering soothing nothings into Lito.

“Stay,” Lito whispered, when Daniela got up and made to leave. They were letting Daniela sleep in their bed that night as a peace offering, a gesture, another boundary crossed, to show that they weren’t disgusted with her. Hernando slept in the middle, dividing them.

“We will talk in the morning,” said Lito.

Hernando’s snores were a comfort that reminded Daniela of her childhood. She fell asleep faster than she expected to.

\---

“I feel broken,” said Lito in the morning. “That I am so weak and jealous that I cannot let you have this.”

They all sat cross legged on the bed, fully dressed, except for Lito, who could never be counted on to be fully dressed when he didn’t have to be. The sun was creeping in and Daniela could feel Hernando’s toes pressing into her side. Or were they Lito’s? Daniela didn’t bother to check. Even after last night, and sleeping in their bed, wrapped in the warm expensive scent of rich men, Daniela was still uncomfortable with their touch.

“No,” said Daniela. “It was not just you. I felt…pressure…to be the best in bed, to prove myself and I did not want to feel that.”

Lito took Daniela’s hand and Daniela knew, without Lito saying it, that Lito felt this pressure to prove himself desirable despite his flaws every day of his life. Hernando eased that pressure for Lito, but his presence, being strong and male, had increased the pressure on Daniela.

“You are not broken,” said Hernando, taking Lito’s other hand. “I am sorry I made you feel pressure,” he said to Daniela, taking her hand.

Daniela turned her head away, feeling choked up. “It wasn’t you,” she said. “It was my own pressure.” No one had ever apologized to Daniela for sexualizing her.

Lito took Daniela’s other hand. They were now all holding hands like a bunch of hippies.

“So no one is broken,” said Lito.

Hernando leaned his head on Lito’s shoulder. “What now?” he said.

“Can we go back to the way things were?” said Daniela.

“You still want to watch?” said Lito.

“Yes,” said Daniela. “If that is okay.”

Lito nodded and Hernando followed suit.

“I want to go with you places,” blurted Daniela. “And get to watch and cook with you and sometimes sleep in your bed.”

“That will be okay,” said Lito.

“Sometimes,” clarified Hernando.

“This feels safe,” said Daniela. “Me watching you. Not being part of it.”

“But you are part of it,” said Lito, and if Daniela cried a few salty tears into Lito’s shirt, Hernando never mentioned it.

Daniela thought she liked it, participating in a relationship that had no room for her, watching lovemaking as an audience and not a participant, being held at a remove, physically, emotionally, always.

But Daniela realized she was wrong. She didn’t need to get fucked to feel like she was a part of the rhythm of Lito and Hernando, for her heart to beat in tandem with theirs when they settled on top of each other. She could be both audience and participant to the relationship all at once.

Time was different in Lito’s apartment. It dripped langorously by, hours spent with legs spread, soaking Lito’s chairs. It was safe and loving and hot all at once. The relationship was not black and white, and it could never be. But it could be multiple things to multiple people, performance and validation and sharing and safety and proof of love as a reason to live. Daniela could be sexual but not sexualized, there but not there, treading in emotional waters that Lito and Hernando were swimming in, performing but not a performance, audience and participant all at the same time. Daniela was part of it, in some incoherent, unsayable, undelineated way.

She was theirs, even if they were not really hers, not by any calculable means. 


End file.
